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Bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics

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Bids for the
1996 (1996) Summer Olympics and Paralympics
Overview
Games of the XXVI Olympiad
X Paralympic Games
Winner: Atlanta
Runner-up: Athens
Shortlist: Toronto · Melbourne · Manchester · Belgrade
Details
CommitteeIOC
Election venueTokyo
96th IOC Session
Map of the bidding cities
Map
Important dates
DecisionSeptember 18, 1990
Decision
WinnerAtlanta (51 votes)
Runner-upAthens (35 votes)
Olympic rings
Part of a series on
1996 Summer Olympics

Six cities submitted bids to host the 1996 Summer Olympics (formally known as Games of the XXVI Olympiad), which were awarded to Atlanta, on September 18, 1990. The other candidate cities were Athens (Greece), Toronto (Canada), Melbourne (Australia), Manchester (United Kingdom) and Belgrade (Yugoslavia).

Results

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1996 Host City Election — ballot results
City Country (NOC) Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5
Atlanta  United States 19 20 26 34 51
Athens  Greece 23 23 26 30 35
Toronto  Canada 14 17 18 22 —
Melbourne  Australia 12 21 16 — —
Manchester  Great Britain 11 5 — — —
Belgrade  SFR Yugoslavia[1] 7 — — — —

Bidding cities

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Athens

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Athens entered as the "sentimental favorite" for these games,[2][3] because Greece, the home of the ancient and first modern Olympics, was considered by many observers the "natural choice" for the Centennial Games.[4][5]

Athens bid chairman Spyros Metaxas demanded that it be named as the site of the Olympics because of its "historical right due to its history," which may have caused resentment among delegates.[4]

The Athens bid was described as "arrogant and poorly prepared", being regarded as "not being up to the task of coping with the modern and risk-prone extravaganza" of the current Games. Athens faced numerous obstacles, including "political instability, potential security problems, air pollution, traffic congestion and the fact that it would have to spend about $3 billion to improve its infrastructure of airports, roads, rail lines and other amenities."[4][6]

Atlanta

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Atlanta was selected by the USOC over bids from Nashville, San Francisco and runner-up Minneapolis to be the U.S. representative in international bidding.[7][8] The city entered the competition as a dark horse, being up against stiff competition against Athens.[9][3]

The US media also criticized it as a second-tier city and complained of Georgia's Confederate history. However, the IOC Evaluation Commission ranked Atlanta's infrastructure and facilities the highest, while IOC members said that it could guarantee large television revenues similar to the success of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.[4] Additionally, former US ambassador to the UN and Atlanta mayor Andrew Jackson Young touted Atlanta's civil rights history and reputation for racial harmony. Young also wanted to showcase a reformed and modernized American South.

The strong economy of Atlanta and improved race relations in the South helped to impress the IOC officials.[5] The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) also proposed a substantial revenue-sharing with the IOC, USOC, and other NOCs.[5]

Other bids

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  • The bid by Belgrade was submitted at the time of the breakup of Yugoslavia, and at a time when increasing tensions amongst former states of the Republic would result in the breakout of war only a year later. This risk was known to the IOC and undoubtedly lead to the Serbian capital ranking last in the final voting tally.
  • The Manchester bid for the 1996 Games was the second to be put forward by the United Kingdom in this period, after Birmingham lost to Barcelona to host the 1992 Summer Olympics. The plan offered by Manchester was seen as too expensive and considerable amount of urban renewal would be required to bring the city up to an Olympic standard. Manchester would bid again unsuccessfully for the Olympics, losing to Sydney for the right to host the 2000 edition. However Manchester would eventually go on to host the highly successful 2002 Commonwealth Games, regarded as an important contributor in the IOC decision to award London the 2012 Summer Olympics.
  • The Melbourne bid marketed itself on the fact the city is home to the largest concentration of Greeks outside Greece itself, and if Athens was logistically unable to host the Centennial Olympics it would provide as sentimental substitute. In addition to this Melbourne has a substantial amount of existing infrastructure to handle such an event, and because of this alone was considered a front runner to host the 1996 Games, and its position at fourth after in the final tally came as a surprise many Olympic bid commentators. Melbourne was the host of the 1956 Olympics, and this may have played against its bid. Sydney later won the right to hold the 2000 Olympics.
  • While the bid put forward by Canada for Toronto to host the 1996 Summer Olympics was considered a viable and safe option, the fact Canada had just hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, was seemingly the bid's biggest downfall. In addition to this Montreal had hosted the Olympics in 1976, which was plagued with organizational problems, and resulted with the taxpayers of Quebec a substantial debt. Because of this the 1996 bid from Toronto was met with skepticism by the Canadian public. Jack Layton was one of the few members of Toronto City Council who opposed the Toronto's bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics.[10] Layton's opposition to the Olympics later came back to affect his 1990 mayoral campaign, as Toronto bid organizer Paul Henderson publicly accused Layton and his allies of costing Toronto the event.[11]

Aftermath

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Allegations were quick to emerge in the Greek and Australian media that Atlanta had won the Games due to a conspiracy organized by global beverage company Coca-Cola, a longtime sponsor of the Olympic Games headquartered in Atlanta. Coca-Cola executives, however, had feared that a successful Atlanta bid would hurt their business. While they produced commemorative pins of the six candidate cities, with the intent of handing out the winning city's pins to IOC delegates, this backfired as others alleged that Coca-Cola had predicted which city had won; indeed sales of the beverage in Greece dropped for the next few years.[9]

A year later, an article appeared in the German periodical Der Spiegel accusing the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) of bribing IOC members with up to $120,000 in cash, gold credit cards and college scholarships for their children. In one case, allegations that Atlanta had promised free heart surgery to IOC members coincided with reports that an IOC official had suffered a heart attack while visiting the city, with the medical expenses covered by ACOG as a "professional courtesy". In his defense, ACOG Chairman Billy Payne said, "Atlanta's bidding effort included excessive actions, even thought processes, that today seem inappropriate but, at the time, reflected the prevailing practices in the selection process and an extremely competitive environment." Indeed, these practices were widespread among cities wishing to host an Olympics, right up until the IOC scandal broke in 1998. The competing cities spent a total of over $100 million campaigning for the right to host the Summer Games, of which Atlanta spent $7.3 million.[5]

Newsday slammed the IOC, saying that it did not provide the "poetic justice" in awarding Atlanta the games.[12] Many felt that Athens should have had the right to host the games to mark the centennial anniversary of the modern Olympics.[13]

Reaction in Athens

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Athens was angry at their defeat to Atlanta.[14] People had gathered throughout the city hoping for a 21-gun salute to kick off the celebrations and upon hearing the announcement, reacted with shock, anger, and dismay.[14] Greek officials, including President Constantine Caramanlis, called the selection of Atlanta one of "rage and disgust"[14] and that the IOC "ignored the history of the Olympic Games"[15] and committed "flagrant disregard of Olympic history."[16] An Athenian daily newspaper declared the "Olympic flame will not be lit with oil, but with Coca-Cola," while the Athens bid chair, Spyros Metaxas, said that the city would never again bid for the Games.[17][18]

However, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki chef of the successful bid for the 2004 Summer Olympics, later admitted that Athens bid was flawed, saying that Atlanta won the Games because "desire and heritage alone would not guarantee...election to host the Games. We realized...we should improve our city...our environment...our infrastructure."[19]

Finally, Athens would host the 2004 Summer Olympics, after 108 years of Olympic history.

References

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  1. ^ The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was still in existence at the time of bidding for the 1996 Olympics, although it would cease to exist by the time of the 1996 Summer Olympic games
  2. ^ Christie, James (13 June 1990). "Olympics key to Athens gridlock". The Globe and Mail. p. C12.
  3. ^ a b Yates, Ronald E. (17 September 1990). "'96 Olympic site in photo finish". The Chicago Tribune. p. 13. The clear sentimental favorite is Athens, which has launched a kind of "divine right" campaign aimed at convincing IOC members they are duty bound to select the Greek capital because it hosted the very first modern Olympic Games in 1896-and 1996 will be the 100th anniversary of that event...Atlanta, considered to be right on Athens' heels.
  4. ^ a b c d Weisman, Steven R. (19 September 1990). "Atlanta Selected Over Athens for 1996 Olympics". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
  5. ^ a b c d Maloney, Larry (2004). "Atlanta 1996". In Finding, John E.; Pelle, Kimberly D. (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 235–6. ISBN 9780313322785. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
  6. ^ Longman, Jere (3 August 1997). "Athens Pins Olympic Bid to World Meet". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2008.
  7. ^ "Cities Named". The New York Times. 29 March 1988. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  8. ^ "When Atlanta won the Olympics: Sept. 18, 1990". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 18 September 1990. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  9. ^ a b Payne, Michael (2006). Olympic turnaround: how the Olympic Games stepped back from the brink of Extinction to Become the Best Known Brand. Westport, Ct.: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-99030-3.
  10. ^ James, Royson (19 September 1990). "Failure pinned on Jack Layton, poverty group". Toronto Star. p. A3. ProQuest 436273311. Retrieved 14 June 2024 – via ProQuest.
  11. ^ Byers, Jim (15 November 1991). "Guide to the real winners, losers Apparent victories are defeats in topsy-turvy world of politics". Toronto Star. p. A12. ProQuest 436517231. Retrieved 14 June 2024 – via ProQuest.
  12. ^ "It's Greek to Us". Newsday. 20 September 1990. p. 56.
  13. ^ The National (television). CBC. 2 July 2003.
  14. ^ a b c Anastasi, Paul (19 September 1990). "Birthplace of Games Shocked and Angered". The New York Times. p. D29.
  15. ^ "Karamanlis Takes Shot at IOC for Picking Atlanta". The Washington Post. 21 September 1990. p. C2.
  16. ^ Macleod, Iain (10 January 1996). "Bidding set to open for the greatest show on earth". The Daily Telegraph. p. 32.
  17. ^ Harvey, Randy (17 September 1990). "Greeks Bearing Gifts Try to Lure '96 Games". The Los Angeles Times. p. 3. 'Morally, the Games belong to us,' Spyros Metaxas, chairman of the Athens bid committee's board of directors, said earlier this year, adding that the city would never bid again if it were not selected for the centennial. What Metaxas meant to say, he amended this week, was that Athens would not bid again for another 100 years.
  18. ^ "Greek Warning On Olympic Bid". The New York Times. Associated Press. 23 August 1990. p. B12.
  19. ^ Longman, Jere (5 September 1997). "Athens Wins a Vote for Tradition, and the 2004 Olympics". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
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